5 Goals for 2014

If I get these 5 things done this year, it will an accomplishment.

Keep the +500 new trees we are planting in April watered and alive through their first year

Install gutters to direct water from the roof to useful places

Add geese and meat birds to our flock

Add to understory plantings in the first orchards

Sell something at our local farmers' market

What are your top 3-5 goals for 2014?

1) Finish chicken coop
2) 200 feet of contour mini hugel beds
3) Start forest garden around pond
4) Seed lower field with sorghum
5) Hop towers

1. Teach my first PDC (starting Jan 26th!) 1/27 UPDATE: First class is now behind me - it went really well! 3/2 - 5th class finished, students are starting on preliminary designs for project sites (sectors, zones, identifying elements)
2. Work on my "hedge fund" (as per this post)
3. Finish the earthworks in my front yard (infiltration basins)
4. Attend the Water Harvesting Certification class in Tucson in March - become a certified water harvester - reading assignments half done. Two more weeks until class starts - can't wait!
5. Do an internship with Geoff Lawton at his Greening the Desert - the Sequel site in Jordan in Oct/Nov. Due to limited vision and other stuff, I will probably be documenting the project for use as a manual or case study.

Oooh good idea!

1. Fix the fence
2. Actually get chickens (I have a coop, but until the fence is fixed can't keep the neighbours dogs from any chickens- so don't have any yet)
3. Build a pond
4. Plant all the plants I have bought/acquired (most are in pots at the moment)
5. Look into doing an actuaul PDC (probably not this year)

1. Move, finally.
2. Plant/seed/start my perennial pasture plants.
3. Acquire chickens for meat and eggs.
4. Fence in a 3 acre area. Or at least part of it.
5. Buy, trade, source, and plant many, many, many trees, bushes, shrubs, vines, and more seeds.

Fun one, thanks for sharing everyone-

-complete my hugelbeds in the market garden
-publish my dairy farming book
-success presenting at Permaculture Voices
-take a summer vacation from the farm
-start apprenticeship program this spring

Nothing like a list to motivate and keep me on track. I love looking back at old journals of mine, with page after page of lists. Pages of crossed-out, completed objectives. One by one they build on each other, and the whole is worth much more than the sum of the parts.

I love those old to-do lists too.

Of the top of my head:
1. Do at least four book reviews on permies
2. Fix up the barn so we can host wwoofers year round. Perhaps wwoofers can do this...
3. Throw a Festival of Potential in the spring where we swap seeds and make biochar
4. Throw a Festival of Abundance in the fall where we press cider with the hand press and have a Free Store
5. Keep the chickens safe from predators. At least most of them.


Boy, I could keep going with this list...

1-take ownership of our new land
2-clear access road/trail into the land
3-set up camper there
4-wake up there, brew coffee and then....
5-ponder the 26 acres of possibilities

I keep a notebook with projects and it's always being added to. Here's five good ones I've got on the horizon.

1. Expand my rabbit production
2. Dig a few new ponds
3. Build a respectable outdoor kitchen
4. Build a smoke house for the six pigs I have reserved for spring 2014
5. Add a few hundred more feet of swales and hugels

Convert our livestock to intensive grazing and hay-less.
Create and plant the first swale in our pasture.
Dig 3 new ponds for livestock and water management.
Finish my keyline plow to include a coulter, roller, and compost tea applicator.
Build a new composting setup and tea brewer.

1. Grow and maintain a small market garden that makes $$$
2. Get up a perimeter fence, or at least fence a large portion of the property.
3. Raise 100 pastured poultry for sale
4. Have permies meet ups at my farm
5. Start a food forest

I didn't see this thread when it was made, somehow, but I like it.

1. Turn half of my front yard grass into food plantings.
2. Build French drain through my yard.
3. Turn my rain barrel system into a multi tiered gutter drainage system that feeds: planter box at 5 feet, rain barrel, planter box at one foot, then into the French drain. Planter boxes are to grow things that scare me (like blackberries).
4. Build a fence in preparation for some sort of fowl.
5. Dig a pond also fed by my roof runoff.

I'll be feeling pretty good if I get 3 of those done.

Baby steps for me:

1) build a couple of zone-1 raised garden beds and a compost bin;

2) establish a clover ground cover and level harvesting surface under the two established/neglected wild pecan trees that I've already rehabilitated by removing competing understory trees and chest-high brambles;

3) finish clearing young ash trees that are shading and competing for water with my ancient (it could be up to 100 years old, and looks it) Kieffer pear tree;

4) clear away the underbrush from beneath at least six more wild pecan and persimmon trees before harvest time next fall;

5) before spring rains, finish building two extremely modest (faggots/fascines and borrowed sod) water/sediment retention barriers in shallow erosion gullies.

Baby steps. There are 40 acres here, but with poor soil over shallow often-protruding bedrock, limited water, and a history of erosion, overgrazing, and neglect. The land is not without permaculture potential, but there's so *much* that needs doing!

Find a way of enticing the menopause fairy to visit and then hold her hostage for as long as necessary.
Convert the olive grove to a food forest.
Send my son across the pond to visit The Land.
Get the grid-feed solar panels up so I get a bit of regular income.
Finish writing my book.

1: get the house ready for the market
2: get the yard ready for the market
3: keep reading any and everything I can find about permaculture
4: keep reading about alternative building methods
5: keep researching the Washtenaw michigan area where we will be landing in another year

Part of getting the yard ready involves all sorts of gardening stuff. This next growing season will hopefully yield Jerusalem artichokes, bunches of garlic, peas, beans, potatoes, squash, lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, tomatoes, peppers. I have a load of work to do in the yard to make it presentable and the house is being massively renovated due to burst pipes in the crazy cold spell we had.

So, there is a whole load of design and execution to be done and walked away from, in order to get us to another, much larger, load of design and execution. Biting off so much. It is, in essence, a leap of faith.

Well, I'm new here but I'll share a little

Decide what area my "Zone 1" will cover

Discover where some of the contours are on this land and build at least 3 swales

Create a Chicken Garden between swales

Create a Rabbit Garden between swales

Design & Build a "Rabbit Shack"

There are TONS of things I know need to be done around here but I'm only one person (and no spring chicken at that!) so I've got to take things slowly.

1. disolve the HOA.
2. get a new colony of bees either by
swarm or purchase.
3. use water from gutters more
effectively
4. get wife on permiculture kick
as much as me
5. get some chickens or rabbits..see
goal 1

Just updated my progress.

How's everyone doing with their goals?

R Scott wrote:Convert our livestock to intensive grazing and hay-less.
Create and plant the first swale in our pasture.
Dig 3 new ponds for livestock and water management.
Finish my keyline plow to include a coulter, roller, and compost tea applicator.
Build a new composting setup and tea brewer.

Ordered the rotational fencing supplies this week.
Flagged a potential contour and higlighted a bunch of lines in the tree seed catalog.
Have one location figured out, a second potential (tied to first swale).
Ground the front edge of my cheap subsoiler to knife edge. Have tea applicator designed, need to buy supplies
Have 90% of the tea brewer parts, will assemble when it is warm enough to actually work.

Thanks for the reminder, Jennifer.

Whew! That's some list! Sounds like you're making progress though.

Charles Tarnard wrote:I didn't see this thread when it was made, somehow, but I like it.

1. Turn half of my front yard grass into food plantings.
2. Build French drain through my yard.
3. Turn my rain barrel system into a multi tiered gutter drainage system that feeds: planter box at 5 feet, rain barrel, planter box at one foot, then into the French drain. Planter boxes are to grow things that scare me (like blackberries).
4. Build a fence in preparation for some sort of fowl.
5. Dig a pond also fed by my roof runoff.

I'll be feeling pretty good if I get 3 of those done.

French drain is about 90% done, I have some concrete around that needs broken up to fill the hole, that will be done when the temps are above 40 degrees (I'm wussing out this weekend due to unreasonable March weather). I have beds set up that have covered most of the grass, once the weather warms a little that should be easy enough to complete.

The two that require woodworking will be difficult, my place isn't set up well with tools or space for that sort of thing. I will be looking for the opportunity when there is less rain so I can work outside.

My original location for the pond isn't looking so good. I have an alternate location but it will require much more work to get overflow away from my house, so we'll see about that.

Edit::: Thanks Jennifer, this is fun to post in and read.

Edit 2::: Thanks Ann for the OP.

1. Become a beekeeper. I plan on building 3 hives a Warre, Top Bar, & Perone
2. Add at least 1 paddock.
3. Plant a food forest in a former sheep paddock and keep the sheep out!
4. Mount our solar panels somewhere that we wont have to shovel to clean them off.
5. Plant more Jerusalem artichokes.

Post by: Peter Smith,
on Jan 27, 2014 19:04:20
1. Grow and maintain a small market garden that makes $$$
2. Get up a perimeter fence, or at least fence a large portion of the property.
3. Raise 100 pastured poultry for sale
4. Have permies meet ups at my farm
5. Start a food forest

Can't quote from phone: (
Not gonna be a food forest this year: ( but I have500+ trees ordered:) mostly hedges, living fences, and enough other stuff to make them an exciting polyculture.
Just about to set delivery date for Freedom Ranger broilers.
Tomorrow night is the first planting for market garden here in the snow covered northeast:~}

There's some inspiring goals here!

Here's my permiculture related goals for 2014

Decide whether to spend the summer in Montana or Alaska

Launch this online permaculture design course that we filmed in Costa Rica

Create at least 4 more niche focused permaculture courses with other thought leaders for http://organiclifeguru.com

Grow more food this year than we did last year in our home garden or at a community garden

Expand my medicinal plants knowledge

Burra Maluca wrote:Find a way of enticing the menopause fairy to visit and then hold her hostage for as long as necessary.
Convert the olive grove to a food forest.
Send my son across the pond to visit The Land.
Get the grid-feed solar panels up so I get a bit of regular income.
Finish writing my book.

Tickets booked for the Grand Adventure.
Base is ready for the solar panels, and payment is waiting to go through. Should be all done in a couple more weeks, but this is Portugal so there are bound to be delays...
A selection of trees and berry bushes planted in the olive grove, more to follow.
Manuscript is still sitting there waiting for chapter 5 to emerge.
Menopause fairy is proving elusive. Suggestions welcome.

Burra Maluca wrote:
Base is ready for the solar panels, and payment is waiting to go through. Should be all done in a couple more weeks, but this is Portugal so there are bound to be delays...

Menopause fairy is proving elusive. Suggestions welcome.

I have lived in places where a "couple weeks" roughly translated into: Not this month or next - but possibly before the end of the year. Maybe.

As for menopause...

1. Keep Fruit trees alive
2. Start and have a productive veggie patch on my new hugelbeds.
3. Start mini aquaponics greenhouse prototype
4. Plant living wall to block out neighbor's view
5. Start a few chickens

Love this idea. And R Scott, holla if you'd like a hand. I'd like to help and get a look at your subsoiler in action.

1 - Cut three new swales in our pasture to add to the two already built.
2 - Plant the two existing swales with the dozens of trees and bushes coming in April.
3 - Plant S. lespedeza in alley crop between two of our swales.
4 - Build five loafing sheds (three-sided sheds), one for each of our paddocks.
5 - Study to see if any EQIP funds are available for the work we're doing on our farm.

Mike Sved wrote:1-take ownership of our new land
2-clear access road/trail into the land
3-set up camper there
4-wake up there, brew coffee and then....
5-ponder the 26 acres of possibilities

Sounds like my last year. That was a big deal though since we spent two years just finding property.

This year:
Get gravel on our road/trail.
Finish electric easement.
get as much growing here as possible aside from the existing oak/hickory/dogwood.
Get some chickens for meat and eggs
Build my shop

Wait, I only get 5, I"m gonna need more than that. I ain't young you know. I've got like 500 things on my to do list. I have to do more like 50 a year.

1. Get 2 beehives established.
2. Complete first terrace.
3. Begin rotational grazing of my 7 new cows.
4. Start milking my 2 new dairy cows.
5. Begin turning forested areas into a food forest.

Brandon Halsey wrote:1. Get 2 beehives established.
2. Complete first terrace.
3. Begin rotational grazing of my 7 new cows.
4. Start milking my 2 new dairy cows.
5. Begin turning forested areas into a food forest.

That's a solid first post there. Welcome.

Heyyy!!! Nice post...

Let see...

1- Built a pound
2- Finish planting the first food forest section that was starting last year. We put cardboard and straw to kill weed last fall.
3- Pursuie the planting od the wind breaker on the North face
4- Aquiring a part of land next to ours to protect residential building.
5- Make a success of the new enlargement garden....( that will give us 80 m2 of veggies garden + the fruit trees + the fruit bushes)..

Isabelle

Matu Collins wrote:I love those old to-do lists too.

Of the top of my head:
1. Do at least four book reviews on permies
2. Fix up the barn so we can host wwoofers year round. Perhaps wwoofers can do this...
3. Throw a Festival of Potential in the spring where we swap seeds and make biochar
4. Throw a Festival of Abundance in the fall where we press cider with the hand press and have a Free Store
5. Keep the chickens safe from predators. At least most of them.


Boy, I could keep going with this list...

I've done two reviews, maybe I should revise that goal upwards.

Progress has been made on the barn plans, I'm considering starting up a crowdfund campaign to do it up good. The plan is to turn one side of the barn into a classroom AND sleeping quarters. It won't cost much and the community can really get something out of it.

Festival of Potential April12, come on by anyone who's in the area! Festival of Abundance will be around the fall equinox. Stay tuned

One of our sweet little Polish Silvers was carried off by a hawk and our handsome roo, King Hot Sauce was carried off by a nursing mama fox. Other than that, the chooks are safe. This is the most dangerous season with nursing canids coming out during daylight hours

Craig Dobbelyu wrote:I keep a notebook with projects and it's always being added to. Here's five good ones I've got on the horizon.

1. Expand my rabbit production
2. Dig a few new ponds
3. Build a respectable outdoor kitchen
4. Build a smoke house for the six pigs I have reserved for spring 2014
5. Add a few hundred more feet of swales and hugels

While waiting for the ground to thaw I've gone from 2 to 13 rabbits. Well... I ate a few too.
I've also decided to take Geoff Lawton's Online PDC this time around.
I've begun sprouting 6 dozen oak trees.
I'm anxiously waiting for the snow to melt so I can do anything else but dream.

@ Craig, same boat here. Still a lot of snow and it is freezing. Last year I put 100 oak nut in the ground and 100 horse chestnut. Can't wait to see if it will work, First time I put them on the ground, normaly I put them in pots.

isabelle

To Do’s for 2014

1. water management – ditches, swales, hugelkulture mounds, downspouts, barrels, pond, rain garden(s)
2. Plant, keep alive the 50+ trees and bushes coming to live here in the next month
3. Keep up with sap from maple trees to make as much maple syrup as possible (small scale)
4. Start perennial seeds for food forest and tea gardens
5. Annual vegetable garden planted, maintained, harvested and preserved

Yikes! Too much more to do!

Linda
What kind of tea are you planting? I take it you are in a mild climate or are growing it in a high tunnel or green house. Or are you growing other herbs for tea rather than the tea bushes themselves? Very curious because I want to grow tea in a high tunnel, but not sure of that approach's effectiveness. Any thoughts from any tea growers would be very welcome.

Dan,
I would like to grow tea bushes also; I haven't figured out how to - I'm in zone 5. These will be herbs for teas. If you figure out the tea growning process, let me know!

1. Survey and dig swale in front yard, dam front drainage ditch to feed system, and dig small pond.

2. Sheet mulch and plant front vegetable garden.

3. Build coop and paddock fences for chickens arriving in July.

4. Build back deck and have door cut in for easier access to and enjoyment of backyard permaculture paradise as it evolves.

5. Get seedlings started for backyard food/timber forest.


This is good. They say the first step in accomplishing your goals is to write them down, as it makes them more concrete to your conscious and subconscious minds. I can feel the resolve strengthening already!

Matu Collins wrote:I love those old to-do lists too.

Of the top of my head:
1. Do at least four book reviews on permies
2. Fix up the barn so we can host wwoofers year round. Perhaps wwoofers can do this...
3. Throw a Festival of Potential in the spring where we swap seeds and make biochar
4. Throw a Festival of Abundance in the fall where we press cider with the hand press and have a Free Store
5. Keep the chickens safe from predators. At least most of them.


Boy, I could keep going with this list...

The barn is making progress! I'm getting super duper excited about this. We have settled on a design for the classroom which will also be a nice winter quarters for wwoofers. All the junk that we don't need is out of there, the floor is tiled, the woodstove is sound, furniture chalkboard and rugs are ready to go. We pretty much need a wall and a door, some paint and a chamber for the composting toilet. Not an expensive crowdfund, I'm thinking of using indiegogo- any crowdfund site advice?

Festival of Potential April 12th, wish y'all could come